I was a year old in Neshoba County when Mississippi Free Press publisher and editor Charlie Butts left his newspaper office in the back of Smith’s Grocery in Jackson, got in his car and started driving north toward Memphis with his newspaper galleys. He was a white Ohio college student who moved to Mississippi to help fight the righteous fight for Black people’s rights through journalism. Early on, nobody would print the daring newspaper in Mississippi, so he’d road-trip a couple hundred miles north in order to provide an alternative to the virulently racist Clarion-Ledger and Jackson Daily News wielded as weapons by the wealthy Hederman family who owned them.
When Charlie pulled over for gas, a man suddenly jumped him with a tire iron, knocking him to the ground while beating him in the head with it. He lived because someone he didn’t see pulled his attacker off, and he was able to run to his car, peeling out toward Memphis without taking time to pay for his gas.
“What the hell happened to you?” the printer staff asked when he showed up at their door, still bloody. “I had to deliver the copy!” he answered.
Against all odds, the original Mississippi Free Press, founded by Black leaders Medgar Evers and RLT Smith and run by a coalition of people of different races from inside and outside the state, made the press run that day and, in fact, printed 111 issues during its epic tenure. Charlie and its founders managed to move the Free Press into a bigger office on Farish Street, the Black business district in Jackson.
One day, New Yorker Lucy Komisar walked in yelling, “Where’s Charlie Butts?” When he looked up, she added, “I’m here to help you edit this newspaper.” He needed the help and said yes to her offer.
‘Giddy With a Sense of Possibility’
Charlie Butts, now 84, called me today from his home in Ohio just as I was pondering exactly what I could say to rise to the moment of what is underway in Mississippi. I was almost at a loss for words, with readers across the country cheering my MFP team on and even calling the state “Blississippi” instead of all the simplistic stereotypes usually flung our way. I hadn’t talked to Charlie since I interviewed him for our MFP Live series back in 2021. He is a man with a deep understanding of the necessity of fearless local journalism. And he is excited about what the Mississippi Free Press has managed to do in my home state since the days of being bloodied for the crime of wanting Black people to have the same rights as white people in Mississippi and America at large.
Charlie is thrilled about a Black man from Mississippi getting so close to a U.S. Senate seat here, something unthinkable back in his day leading their MFP. He talked today about his Black freedom co-conspirators Aaron Henry and Bob Moses—later one of my mentors in generational empowerment—holding a mock election for Black people in 1963. People had to “register” to vote—a rather arduous process from Moses and Henry, Charlie told me—and then they could go to churches, coffee shops and other community spots across the state to “vote.” Nearly 80,000 disenfranchised Mississippians showed up. “They had never done that, of course. They couldn’t in that system,” Charlie told me.
It was the excitement of possibility Charlie remembers the most about the mock election. People could start seeing that it just might be possible for them to pull a lever for democracy, too. It ignited possibility, lit a fight of hope and determination.
“We’re seeing people here now giddy with a sense of possibility and feeling like their votes matter,” I told him about today’s Mississippi. “For so many years, people here haven’t seen real alternatives on their ballot that excited them to get out and vote. To me, it’s not about partisanship. It’s about hope and possibility for people that goes beyond partisanship.”
Charlie agreed, saying that it reminds him of how people felt to vote even in a mock election then. “What we’re seeing now,” he said of the U.S. Senate race in Mississippi, “has a much bigger effect of the same kind. There is possibility: We can do that; why not be part of it?”
“This Mississippi election will be a big impetus to future elections no matter how it turns out,” he added.
‘You’re In Jackson Doing the Business’
I needed to talk to Charlie Butts today; maybe he sensed it all the way out in Ohio, leading him to pick up his phone. What we do with the MFP now is still not easy, and we’re still often not taken seriously enough as a high-quality newsroom imagined and run by a Mississippi woman and staffed mostly with people born and raised in Mississippi. I won’t recount the challenges, slights and even financial punishments we’ve endured; the slurs; the false rumors; and yes, even some stalking, although nothing like what Charlie and his colleagues endured then.
I could count the ways resources are a challenge and how much harder we have to prove ourselves than more predictable types starting and running more predictable newsrooms in America with more readily available funding avenues. Although I’m a writer and muckraking journalist at heart, these days I have to spend most of my time raising and scrapping for funds to staff up our bureaus more and support and grow the truly remarkable and collaborative team I’ve assembled when, you know, I could be retiring and finally finishing a book or two.
“So much of my time was trying to raise money to make it grow, making several trips to New York,” Charlie told me, as if he could read my mind. I immediately thought of the fundraising event we’re having in Brooklyn in a couple of weeks. And I thought of him and others trolling for resources in much, much, much harder times.
Charlie then said exactly what I needed to hear today, passing their Mississippi Free Press torch forward, and gladly. “You’re in Jackson doing the business. You’re completing the journey. This is what it was all about for us,” said the publisher, who was bloodied while trying to get his galleys to the damn printer in another state.
This conversation today about did me in; I’m crying when I write this, but this is all about them—about you—the people of Mississippi. It’s about my team and the Mississippi Free Press spirit that must carry forward another 60 years. They, and other younger Mississippians, are why I write fundraising appeals, grant applications and ask people for money even if it’s not my natural habitat. It’s just not enough that I have gotten to carry on the Free Press tradition here for 24 years; it’s about them being able to carry that torch forward past me.
The point of what Charlie and others did right here in Jackson, despite all the terrible odds and the terrifying threats then, is inspiring and empowering to future generations of Mississippians. That now includes me and my team—both natives and transplants—who aren’t here as saviors, but as collaborators. What kind of state do younger Mississippians inherit? Can they stay and fight? Will the state love them back? Will the nation step back and see the larger picture and realize that we are not their stereotype?
Ultimately, this is about democracy in America. This nation is only as strong as our weakest link. I don’t want Mississippi to be the place that runs smart young people off because it chooses hate over love and buries our real history that can bind and heal us now. I want others (like I did after 18 years) to come back proudly and stand together for our state and nation. I want them to work for all our people, too.
Thank you, Charlie, for your service and for calling me today. I needed our chat.
This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.
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